Who to Play Twelve?

So we find out today that Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who, and everyone is asking: Who to play Who? This article in Radio Times says that Stephen Mangan jokingly posted the above photo to Twitter. I actually think he’d be a good Doctor, based on his great interpretation of Dirk Gently, but personally, my number one choice would be someone I’ve never heard of, someone I don’t already have an opinion of.

The problem with the suggestions in the mentioned Radio Times article is that so many of them have already been in Doctor Who in the last few seasons. That’s why I was surprised that Paterson Joseph was in the running a while back, though I still stand by the opinion that he would have been the right choice to give the role to. But it’s not like they’ve never repeated actors before for different characters (Bernard Cribbins, anyone?).

There’s big talk about should it be a girl. If you look at the writing from last season, you see that they’re afraid to break the pattern of even having all the companions be basically the same character. I doubt that they’re comfortable breaking the mold of the Doctor as well. It would certainly get a lot of people upset, and I think there are few actresses who would be able to clear that hurdle. RT already mentioned Olivia Colman and Tamsin Grieg, both of whom I like and both of who’ve been on the show, as well as Jessica Hynes who is brilliant in everything. Could they pull it off? Sure, but there are so many fan girls, they’d need to balance it out with a male companion.

Then there’s talk about race and age. I won’t even get into race because it’s a stupid argument, but Moffat better be careful with age because if he follows the trend, the next Doctor is going to be twelve-years-old and seriously affect his demographics. And then, the most important question: Will he be ginger?